Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "Neatly on my shelf, eighty books I haven't read. They make me look inept. I should move with the times..." READ MORE
Book Review: Fit, Young & Fascist
Everything was political in the 1930s. It was a haunted decade that “almost made me a Communist,” as Alberta Premier William Aberhart put it. Strong, Beautiful and Modern captures the oddest political expression of all, the campaign for physical culture. Archival images of mass synchronized exercises of the Pro-Rec League in the parks of Vancouver bear an unnerving resemblance to parades of bronzed youth so popular in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia. “Interest in fit, strong and beautiful bodies in the 1930s was not the monopoly of totalitarian and right-wing regimes,” writes historian Charlotte Macdonald. “Was it a modernity of individuality and freedom or of mass conformity and national duty?” Beginning in 1937 with Britain’s Physical Training and Recreation Act and spreading through the “white Dominions” of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, legislators enacted national fitness programs. This is an intriguing story, crisply told. READ MORE
Warn Of Agents On Campus
Canadian universities are targets of foreign agents determined to intimidate critics and scout recruits, says an RCMP briefing note. The Mounties did not identify any campus by name but said foreign interference was sophisticated: "Universities can be used as venues for ‘talent spotting.'" READ MORE
PM Choked Up By Schoolkids
An emotional Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday recited comments from elementary schoolchildren he said were worried about an American takeover. Neither Liberal Party aides nor the Georgetown, Ont. school he claimed had forwarded the children’s comments would corroborate the story: "Last week I met a teacher." READ MORE
Promises A GST-Free Vehicle
Any future Conservative cabinet would remove the GST on the purchase of a new light passenger vehicle providing it is Canadian-made, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. Costs were not detailed: "This will boost the sale of new Canadian-made cars." READ MORE
Would Bring Back $100 Bonds
Public works should be financed through the sale of consumer savings bonds with a promise of tax-free interest, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singhs said yesterday. Costs were not detailed: "Canadians are saying, ‘I want to do my part.'" READ MORE
Marijuana’s No Treaty Right
Indigenous Canadians do not have an ancestral right to sell marijuana without a license, a Nova Scotia judge has ruled. Provincial Court dismissed the “test case” of a First Nations distributor who invoked treaty rights following his arrest: "This type of offence has become a widespread problem." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
I was born in Hartford, Connecticut. I have ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence. Both my parents were registered Democrats. I voted Democrat in 1972, in the only ballot I cast in the U.S. before our family moved to Cape Breton. My mother Stephanie volunteered as a Democratic fundraiser and campaigned against the Vietnam War, and wound up on Nixon’s Enemies List. On the wall of my parliamentary office is a framed watercolour of the White House that Franklin Roosevelt autographed for my grandfather. Do you know what party George Washington belonged to? He didn’t. Washington was against political parties. The U.S. was never designed as a two-party system, not at all. Yet today Democrats and Republicans have a vice grip on their democracy.
